Let The Drink Talk

[Johnny]

Whisky Galore! The Making of a Fillum

Giles Croft brazenly takes a single known fact - that the director of the famous Ealing Comedy ordered a rewrite of the screenplay at the eleventh hour - buttresses it with a few other pieces of documentary evidence and invents this highly plausible and truly delicious tale of a hastily assembled meeting at Compton Mackenzie’s home on Barra.

Here, in the half-light of a failed generator, the author, his secretary and his great-nephew are pressed into joining the director, producer and lead actress for a reading. They have to play all the parts between them, using whatever comes to hand be it tennis rackets, a chair on wheels or a sink plunger. It’s wry and gentle Scots stuff that induces a quiet chuckle rather than an outright laugh.

This is a slender play, almost a studio play, and you wait in vain for any of the Croft trademarks of ambitious spectacle and technical wizardry. Even the ending is almost low-key, though with a very neat twist also based on fact. The pleasure lies in the rising glee and reckless confidence of this ersatz cast as they get involved in the story. The gauche great-nephew (Tim Smith) turns into a resourceful soldier and the famous actress (based on Joan Greenwood) relishes the role of telephonist.

Richard Shelton as Joseph Macroon typifies the pragmatism and archness of the wily islanders as they outwit the posturing Sassenach Captain Waggett (Robert Austin). Not to be missed by lovers of the ‘fillum’, whose spirit it wholly captures.
Production information

By:
Compton Mackenzie and Angus McPhail, adapted by Giles Croft, who also directs
Management:
Nottingham Playhouse Theatre Company in association with BV Productions
Cast:
Richard Shelton, Karen Drury, Robert Austin, Sally Armstrong, Tim Bryn Smith, Matthew Cullum
Design:
Helen Fownes-Davies
Sound:
Adam McCready
Lighting:
Richard G Jones

Production information can change over the run of the show.
Run sheet

Playhouse Nottingham
February 2-17
Theatre Royal Glasgow
February 20-24
Hackney Empire London
February 26-March 3
Devonshire Park Eastbourne
March 5-10
Theatre Royal Windsor
March 19-24

http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/15862/whisky-galore-the-making-of-a-fillum
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[Fernando77]

And what about the remake of the film? Any news about it?
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[Johnny]

[Fernando77]

[Iain]

The site is full of spam when I just checked

[Johnny]

Unfortunately was when I visited as well
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[Fernando77]

Eggs with bacon, saussages and spam. Spam with spam egs and saussages. Bacon with spam. Spam with spam. Spam pam pam...
SPAM GALORE!
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[Johnny]

[Johnny]

Whisky Galore, Theatre Royal, Glasgow

Far be it from me to accuse the artistic director of Nottingham Playhouse of plagiarism, but Giles Croft's adaptation of Sir Compton Mackenzie's book and film script bears more than the obvious relationship with Paul Godfrey's Mull Theatre version of almost a decade ago.

Where Godfrey staged a radio-studio recording of the story, Croft - who has a track record of adapting Ealing celluloid comedy - reimagines it as a read-through of the film script in the drawing room of the author's Barra home. Some of the funniest moments come from the invention of sound effects and the confusion of actors doubling as more than one character in the same scene, exactly as they would in a performance for the wireless.

The conceit brings with it problems - there are layers of characters playing characters at different removes from "reality" that adds little entertainment but much initial confusion - and rings a bit hollow when folk start descending through trapdoors with crates of bottles as if it is all for the camera.

Croft's justification is that his play is as close to the film as the film is to history (the real-life sinking of the SS Politician), and there is a suggestion of some purpose in the device when the actor playing Sir Compton, "Monty", is portraying the bumptious Captain Mainwaring-ish Home Guard officer Captain Waggett - but whether Croft means this as a comment on the character of the author is never entirely clear.

Either way, it does present a considerable challenge to the company of six, coached by the estimable Carol Ann Crawford in the range of accents they need. They sure deserve a drink at the end of it.

9:15pm today

By KEITH BRUCE, Arts Editor

http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/featuresartsreview/display.var.1209974.0.0.php
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